Hedging on the Blog name...

How do I know it was Engine 10?

Well, the black and yellow "10" on the center rear compartment, still visible under a thin coat of silver paint, is a pretty good clue, I think. Neither of the districts that had this rig after Tacoma use a numbering system that includes any apparatus identified with a simple "10".

But was it Engine 10 during its entire run with Tacoma? Now that I boldly started the blog with this name, I am not so sure.

By the time I immersed myself in being a goofball underage fire buff in Tacoma, it was after 1980. At that time, the eight 1970 American LaFrance pumpers were assigned to E3, E4 (at that time referred to as 'Support 4'), E7, E8, E10, E14, E15 and E16.

There were six newer pumpers in the fleet by 1980. The two '76 Telesqrt ALFs referred to in the first post (E6 and E17), and four '80 Mack CF pumpers (E1 and E2 as normal pumpers, and E9 and E11 with Telesqrts).

If you take away those six newer pumpers, it almost certainly changes how those eight ALFs were assigned when they arrived in 1970, making up to six of them possible hand-me-downs from elsewhere. So who (if anyone) got the hand-me-downs? That is before my time, so to speak.

I've been waiting to hear back from the Tacoma Fire Garage on this. They've been very helpful to the extent that they can, answering questions about a rig out of their inventory for almost 20 years. The data is somewhere, and it will be found.

If I ever am successful in the restoration of this engine, I intend to use 1970-vintage livery and identify it according to its very first TFD assignment, and I acknowledge it might not always have been Engine 10.

Now really, do you really care about this? Probably not. This is just an early end run to explain myself in advance if the blog name suddenly changes to The Engine 2 Project, etc.

Thanks for humoring me.